Maka the Vampire Slayer
by CluainnFhada
Summary: Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU. Maka settles into the ominously named Death City with the intention of fighting the forces of evil and avoiding meaningful relationships. The results are mixed. Warnings: Violence, non-explicit sexual content, swearing, minor character death.
1. Chapter 1

**Oh my god. Literally everyone deserves thank yous and apologies and I feel like I'm one of those Oscar people who didn't write a list and are terrified of forgetting someone so... Here goes.**

**The resbang mods- literal saints. Figurative saints. Out up with so much angst from me. Deserve better. **

**Chaotic Livi- also put up with a heck tonne of angst and grumps and made an art and it is spectacular and more then I deserve. She.. Ugh. I want to make her some dinner or something. **

**kittykatz09- extremely supportive beta. Has gone above and beyond the call of duty. Deserves cake.**

**spookyscandal-IRL supportive beta. Puts up with my angst from 10 to 5 on weekdays.**

**ishouldreallygetofftheinternet- writing buddy. Let me live in her house. Paid for froyo and falafel.**

**indiearrow- all around sweetheart and head cheerleader. Literal star.**

_'In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone must battle the vampires, the demons, and the forces of evil. She is the Slayer'  
><em>  
>Maka was in a glowering mood. She glowered at her overbearing father, the new school, and the students milling around on the first day. There was a lot of firsts today, the first day of term, the first day of her senior year and her first day of American High School education at the Doctor William Montgomery Academy. She glowered some more for good measure.<p>

She was of a friendly disposition, so she found keeping up the glowering to be hardo, arduous work, but it was necessary. Necessary if you wanted to explicitly avoid making friends and forming close relationships with people. She'd made that mistake and learned that extremely painful lesson. It had forced her to move halfway around the world to live with her ko,remaining parent, Spirit Albarn, in Death City, Nevada. Slayers stood alone.

Death City. Sounded like the kind of omen that was bad, if you believed in that sort of thing. But she doubted that a peaceful life was in line for the Slayer even if she lived somewhere like Happy Town or Sunnydale.

She got out of the car and closed the door on her father's ceaseless declarations of love and apologies for his abysmal style of parenting- thus far, mostly absentee.

She's been worried about blending in, but glaring around; she could see that wouldn't be a problem. People appeared to be wearing whatever the hell they liked with almost no regard for current fashions or trends. She looked down at her short('too short' her father had claimed) tartan skirt, white blouse and slouchy yellow knit sweater that required constant adjustment if she didn't want to look like she was only wearing a jumper. Hair in twin tails, she'd've looked every bit the innocent bookworm she had been before she'd been called if not for the shoes.

Maka'd never admit it aloud, in the same way you'd never admit you were cold to the parent who told you to bring a jacket to whom you had insisted you were fine, but she was starting realise her mother's advice 'you are going to need shoes that aren't boots,' might actually be good advice. So there she was, wishing she maybe had a nice pair of keds or sneakers or anything that wasn't steel toed.

She needed to go to the principal's office, where she would be officially welcomed and introduced to some kind of sponsor student to show her around and help her out.

Probably. That's what happened in _Ten Things I Hate About You _anyway.

The principal was busy frowning at the transcripts her previous school had sent over when he motioned her to enter through his open door, almost immediately after she knocked. They were all in Japanese, so hopefully he couldn't read that she had fluctuating grades and sketchy attendance and a rather large amount of destroyed property to account for. She especially hoped he couldn't read the recommendation that she be given psychiatric help. After squinting at the papers for several seconds more, he was forced to conclude he could not read Japanese kanji and tucked the pages into a file that had her name written in block capitals on it.

He introduced her to a girl named Tsubaki, who had moved from Japan to Nevada when she was fourteen in order to attend an American school. Maka suspected she'd been selected as her guide incase Maka's English was... Less than desirable.

Tsubaki was quietly helpful, and sweet. By the time lunchtime rolled around, Tsubaki's patience with Maka's monosyllabic replies was still remarkably strong and she asked if Maka wanted to sit with her and her friends at lunch. Maka declined politely, opting instead to go to the library. En route, she cursed her polite response. She was supposed to be being antisocial!

The library was big and smelt of wonderfully familiar - she guessed all libraries must smell the same. The librarian perked up, and before Maka could get lost in the stacks and read recreationally for the first time in ages, he slammed a heavy tome on the counter.

"I have just the book you need!" He declared, looking obnoxiously cheerful.

This had probably looked really cool in his head, and he'd probably waited all day for the Slayer to show up, but mostly she just wanted to slap him.

'Demons' was embossed in the worn, ancient leather of the book.

"I guess you're my new Watcher then," she eyed him suspiciously. He was nothing like Azusa, her old Watcher had been. She'd been hardworking and intense, whereas this librarian guy looked as likely to juggle as hold his own in fight. Azusa had been tough, but that hadn't been enough. This guy looked like a clown in a rubbish disguise, how was he supposed to do any better?

"Deaton Lord," he introduced. "Mr. Lord to you. And you must be Maka!"

He pronounced it wrong like 'May-ka' and she couldn't help but hope this was all some huge joke and her real Watcher would show up, questioning this man's authority and wondering who the hell he was before having him forcefully ejected from the premises. But until that happened, she was stuck with this grossly optimistic fellow, and at the very least she'd like him to know how to say her name properly.

"It's Maka," she said, sliding the book of the counter and tucking it into her bag for some light reading later.

"My apologies," he took a map from beneath the counter, and unfolding it, Maka saw that he'd marked out potential patrol routes running through the numerous cemeteries and crematoriums the city had to offer. Maka took a highlighter from her bag and carefully coloured her father's apartment building in. And then, when they started arguing quietly about patrol routes, for the first time since she'd moved here and left behind a handful of corpses that used to be her friends and family, she felt normal.

After they'd spent half of lunch drawing and redrawing pencil lines on a map, Mr. Lord laid down some ground rules, of which there was really just one with a lot of suggestions by of how to keep it. He lectured her as she whittled.

Her identity as the Slayer was to become the kind of identity many superheroes had had before her, a secret one. His son, who would one day become a Watcher and was certainly aware of the world's supernatural underbelly would be kept in blissful ignorance of her identity as the Slayer. He was to be left out of this perilous lifestyle for as long as possible.

Their meetings would be extra English lessons or just excessive amounts of time spent tucked away in some corner of the library, drinking tea and reading books.

Maka shrugged- avoiding people would be easier if she was one of those pretentious people who prefer the smell of books to human contact. (All cynicism aside, she did like reading musty smelling books and drinking tea). She hadn't read in ages. She listened to audiobooks while whittling stakes and running.

It'd be rude to listen to one now though, while he was in full speech mode. She should probably be taking notes of something, instead of whittling.

If you weren't fast enough, the stake turned to dust with the rest of the vampire. Which was nearly always inconvenient, but in a pinch anything wooden and pointy enough to drive through the flesh of the undead would do. Maka'd used everything from number two pencils and chopsticks to picket fences and tree branches. She preferred stakes though, because she could wrap the non-pointy hilt end in string for grip. That, and splinters were a bitch.

_"Hiro," _

_"Maka," she helped him up, dusting off her skirt._

_She smiled and he smiled back, eyes bright and clear and the bluest blue under the sky. They were the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen. _

Tsubaki was a gentle soul, the kind of accepting person that meant her clique was largely formed of those rejected from other groups of potential peers. She found them at the same table they always sat.

Brian Costello, known to all as Black Star, bounced around more foster homes then he could count in Vegas before being shipped out to Death City. He climbed things that didn't need climbing and could start a bar fight in a church.

Seated opposite was Deaton Lord Jnr. 'Kidd', his dad worked as the school librarian and he himself was obsessive compulsive. The object of his obsession was symmetry and finding perfect balance, which was strange when you considered his dye job and everything.

And two of the scariest people Tsubaki had ever encountered- Liz and Patti Thompson, who'd hitched from Brooklyn to Nevada to escape a past they weren't opening up about and lived with a fictitious parent in the cheapest motel in town. They were tough as nails; the kind of people society warned you would be down dark alleys waiting to beat you up and steal your wallet.

"I hope Maka's going to be okay," Tsubaki said as she sat down, sliding her tray into its customary spot beside Black Star's, where he could steal half her food with ease.

"The new girl? Don't get attached. She looks like a strong breeze could knock her over. I don't peg her to last two weeks before she succumbs to the unnaturally high death rate in this town," Liz barely glanced up from the school newspapers. The weekly rag was poorly written, aggressively unedited and composed almost entirely of drivel, so everyone just skipped straight to the obituaries. "Micheal King, have to go to that one... I would put money on her being here within two weeks," she shook the paper for emphasis.

"She looked kinda tough to me," Black Star started. "Apart from the major nerd alert she set off."

"She sat in front of me in Chemistry, and though she didn't raise her hand to answer any questions, I have a feeling she knew all the answers anyway," Kidd said. "Can I have the newspaper after you, Liz?"

"Sure thing, Kiddo. It's a 'new school, new leaf' thing," Liz said, jabbing her fork in Black Star's direction. She scribbled the details of Micheal King's service down.

"Remember me'n'you sissie?" Patti said, around a mouthful of school dinner. "Sweet as sugar and twice as nice?" She swallowed before cackling.

"That didn't last," Liz passed the newspaper to Kidd. "It's better to be tough in this town. Anyone wanna take fifteen dollars for two weeks?"

Tsubaki nodded firmly.

_He was talking animatedly as they walked home, their friends giving them 'space.' Their hands grazed and suddenly working up the nerve she wrapped her calloused hand around his smooth fingers, and he squeezed hers in response._

Tsubaki found her the next day, and the day after that and all the days to the end of the week. Maka was surprised the transformation from sweet, almost boring girl to the aggressively friendly one now dragging her to be part of her basketball team in Gym. She almost forced their names into Maka's memory.

Tsubaki's small, eclectic group of friends looked at her sceptically, then back at Tsubaki like 'Really? This chick? Really?' then resigned themselves to polite conversation.

Oddly enough, none of them had been in Death City born and raised, so they all had something to talk about. When the conversation turned to family, it died soon after Liz told her about her younger sister Patti, who was in her sophomore year.

They were supposed to be playing basketball, but right now they were watching two other teams playing- Maka watched diligently, a look of puzzlement on her face, her brow furrowed. Before she was called, she had never been interested in competitive sports and that certainly hadn't changed after. She'd elected out of Gym at home in an effort to avoid displaying her supernatural Slayer strength, but the only way to get out of gym here was to join the marching band and she didn't have a musical bone anywhere in her body. In short, she had almost no idea how to play basketball.

The whistle blew, signalling the team change over and Maka's expression of concentration changed to one of outright panic. Even with Slayer strength and speed and heightened reflexes she was awful and everyone could see it. In another school in another town the opposing might've taken pity on her, but this school had no time for the weak, or those who were terrible at basketball.

Apart from that, the only person on their team who cared about winning was Black Star and it was his humble opinion that he could do that single-handedly. Tsubaki and the others on her team called out what she was sure they thought was helpful advice, except none of them agreed, so she just ended up confused and flinging the ball away almost as soon as she obtained possession of it.

In the end once they were out in the hallway after they'd all finished showering, despite the fact they'd lost every game bitterly, Liz, Black Star and Kidd had expressions that vaguely resembled triumph mapped into their faces. Tsubaki, who hadn't seemed too focused on the outcome of the matches, looked both disappointed and saddened by the result. Black Star's smug expression changed when he caught sight of Tsubaki's face and he seemed to be briefly torn betwixt some emotion or another before he sighed heavily, softened and wrapped his arm around Maka'a shoulder.

"Listen, kid- no, not you- Death City isn't like whatever rinky-dink Japanese village you came from, or any other town on this world. And the DWMA isn't exactly like other schools either. People who've been here all their lives can't see it, maybe because they don't want to, maybe because they don't really know any better than this whack dump. But as an Outsider-" and he said it like that, like it had a capital, like it was a title "-you're going to see that all is not as it should be in Death City," he made a vast sweeping gesture, referencing the entire city and perhaps it would have been as impressive as he intended if he hadn't been gesturing to a grimy public school corridor.

"Watch it, you blue haired midget!" Liz snapped, ducking away from the motion. "You have to be tough as nails here, or else really lucky," she glared at Black Star, who ignored her and puffed out his chest. He thumped it with his fist.

"Don't worry, little fish, it's a big pond, but I, the great Black Star, will protect you!"

Maka snorted, and the entire group laughed as air hissed out of Black Star's overinflated ego and his indignant expression.

_He always called it 'making love' which Maka thought was sweet and old fashioned. He made her feel like a lady, not a predestined killing machine._

'It's a shithole, but they let everyone in,' was not the world's endorsement, but Maka didn't really care. Between patrolling and school work and learning words for a lot of specific terms like 'hypotenuse' she had earned this night out. This, or a really long nap.

Well, she'd earned something, so after a quick sweep (Mr. Lord, despite being obnoxiously cheery and grossly optimistic, was super strict about patrols) she was headed towards the local nightspot- the Bronze. So she needed to wear something both patrol friendly and suitable for clubbing.

The lines between her Slayer wear and civvies had become blurred in the last year before she'd left Japan, but since arriving in Death City she'd reorganized her wardrobe, separating the two parts of her life. Studious nerd and vengeful Slayer were two very different looks.

She wanted to keep them separate, but for a little while, she didn't have any choice tonight. In the end she'd worn a halter top she'd gotten as a present and one of her leather jackets zipped over it. Her skirt was short, like all her skirts. She liked the freedom of movement that gave her, as long as she remained unconcerned with someone seeing her multipack underwear.

She grabbed a stake, and slung a cross around her neck. Her father had been confused when he'd knocked her jewellery box over and it had burst open revealing dozens of crucifixes and rosary beads wound together in a formidable clump. She'd since untangled them, so extracting tonight's pretty, yet practical accessory had taken less time than usual.

Her dad didn't pay much attention to her leaving, or rather he acknowledged her leaving but didn't question it. Maka had made it clear that after half a lifetime of virtually no contact, he was not exactly entitled to lay down the law. In Japan, Kami had been extremely strict. Before she found out about Maka's sacred duty, it had been all sneaking out of windows and then 'you're grounded' and more sneaking out of windows and the painful 'I'm disappointed in you' and still more sneaking out of windows and finally that distressing kind of sad apathy and leaving through the front door. Things did get much better after the truth about why all the late nights were so crucial came out, though.

The graveyards were completely empty of the undead that night, which was strange, but she retained stubborn optimism and made her way cautiously to the Bronze. She was optimistic, not stupid, and the Bronze was in a bad part of town. It was something she was apprehensive about; dimly lit popular nightclubs in bad areas of town were like all you can eat buffets to vampires. She dusted more vampires in that kind of situation then she wanted to recall.

She was only about a half block away from the Bronze, at least, that's what her smartphone was telling her, when she got jumped. Eight fresh vamps, still warm and muddy, hands still healing from clawing their way out of their graves.

They came at her all at once, faces twisted into ugly vampiric snarls and eyes yellow and feral. Maka never understood why vampires had two faces, but she was grateful. Quite frankly, it was a hell of a lot easier to stake something that didn't look human.

She staked one quickly, before he noticed he was dust and she drove the stake into a second just as two others grabbed her. The staked one, aware that her seconds were numbered swung at Maka, exploding into dust just as she made contact with her face. Maka inhaled the ashes of the vamp, choking and blinded and feeling quite thoroughly 'ick'. She swung blindly, her fist cracking off something's jaw, a something that yelped before she drove her elbow into the gut of one of the vampires holding her. He released his hold, winded.

She grabbed the arm the other and dropped to one knee to flip him over her shoulder. He flipped spectacularly and she closed her streaming, irritated eyes on focusing on her sense of hearing. She quietly thanked Azusa for making her train blindfolded with alarming regularity.

She was also grateful that these guys were so fresh- they still had humanity's noisy way of moving, not the also imperceptible way that older vampires did. She ducked an undisciplined swipe and snapped a high kick in the direction of its origin. Her foot made contact with his shoulder, so he went stumbling but not flying as she might've hoped.

She didn't have a stake, didn't know where she could get something impromptu. Any Watcher would be right to scold her for not having a spare, she lamented as she did her level best to keep them at bay. There was a familiar sort of thud.

It was the sort of thud one could expect to result from a well executed punch, but she certainly hadn't accomplished that. Her fist went through one of the vampires as they turned to a soft cloud of ash and she opened her eyes a fraction.

"Here!" The stranger, male tall with ridiculous white hair, tossed her a stake. She wrapped her gloved hand around it, and drove it quickly through the nearest vamp's heart. Of course the freelance hunter had a stake, and she, the Actual Slayer, did not.

They quickly dispatched the remaining vampires and Maka looked down at herself, blinking away the remaining ash, and sighed. She was coated in a thick layer of vampire corpse and her makeup was probably ruined. This was made all the more obvious and obnoxious because of the fact that the stranger who had quite possibly saved her life looked fantastic.

He was standing all dramatic in an ankle length leather coat that billowed slightly despite the stillness of the night, his white hair spike and eyes that were a dark burgundy she was too polite to call red.

She started brushing herself down, too stubborn to ask the question that burned at the tip of her tongue- 'who are you?' -because she could tell he really wanted her to ask it. Then perhaps swoon.

Vampire dust rose in great clouds and she sneezed. Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious chuckled then stifled the sound.

"Excuse me, but what's so funny?" She asked, indignantly.

"Sorry Slayer, but you sneeze like a kitten," he shrugged, "it's adorable,"

"I don't- how do you know who I am?"

"Small girl in pigtails goes around staking vamps and yelling 'fear me, I am the Slayer! Going to dust you to pieces!' It gets around, love. Came to see for myself. Lucky for you, it seems,"

Maka wanted to protest, she had the situation under control, but honestly she would probably be a little more dead if it wasn't for him. He looked at her again, expecting some kind of gratitude.

"Thanks, I've got to go, I'm meeting some friends,"

"Like that?" He raised an eyebrow sceptically.

"Occupational hazard, unfortunately. I'll clean up properly when I get there,"

"Where are you going?"

"The Bronze,"

He winced, then rummaged in his pockets to pull out a neatly folded monogrammed handkerchief that seemed completely at odds with his 'bad boy' look. He licked the corner of the handkerchief, tongue darted out from between dangerous, inhuman looking fangs. Before she could flinch away from this complete strangers spit, he started to rub at the ashes/mascara that remained on her face.

She snatched the handkerchief away, perturbed by the extreme momishness of the gesture. He took a step back, hands raised in surrender, his lips twisted into a smirk. She smudged away the ashes and mascara.

"Did I get it all?"

He took the handkerchief gently and dampened the remaining clean corner, before wiping away the remaining ash and mascara. He tugged the ties out of her hair and ruffled it with a strange kind of practised ease. It felt nice, a different set of calloused hands running through her hair. Hiro's hands had always been so soft, she'd been jealous.

"I have to go," she said.

He pressed the grubby handkerchief into Maka's hand.

"Keep it, Slayer," he grinned, and displayed a mouthful of pointed teeth. "You might need it,"

"I have to go," she repeated, staring at the 'S.E.' embroidered in dark red, almost like dried blood, thread on the corner of the handkerchief. The stranger started walking off, and Maka yelled after her.

"Who are you anyway?"

"A friend." He called back.

Maka made a quiet noise of frustration and stalked off in the direction of the Bronze, stuffing the once pristine handkerchief into her pocket.

"By the way," He said. "I'm pretty sure those guys were just cannon fodder for the Slayer. You might want to hurry to the Bronze. It's a big night."

He was headed, unhelpfully, in the opposite direction to the local club. Maka broke into a run, heavy boots thudding against the ground. The stranger peeked out from behind the corner he'd turned, at the tiny frustrated blonde and grinned. He'd been pretty cool, if he had to say so himself.

She could handle herself, but just to be on the safe side, he'd hang around the entrance to catch any escapees.

_Patrolling with Hiro was fun. He was fast enough to hold his own and it was nice, to spend the evening alone with her boyfriend, even if they weren't very traditional dates. _

There were no bouncers at the door to the Bronze. Well, strictly speaking, that was inaccurate. There was a single bouncer, but he was dead, tossed aside like so much rubbish after he'd been drained of his blood. One vamp was perched in his chair, focused on a crossword in the Death City Times , spectacles perched comically on his game face. She staked him just as he asked about four across. She grabbed the paper and scanned it.

"Bludgeon," she said to herself. Before she could get distracted she entered the club, stake at the ready.

Liz was right. It was a shithole. Its status as such was perhaps heightened by the fact that the humans were grouped together and seated on the middle of the dance floor, glancing fearfully at the vampires circling them. There were others, standing guard at what mystery be the exits. There was another, some kind of ring leader, on the dark, dingy stage she assumed to be normally inhabited by local bands and bad DJ's.

He was going off on some sort of tangent about crossing over to the dark spaces and being a creature of the night and what a gift the bite was. It'd be at least another ten minutes before anyone was in any real danger.

She could see the way Tsubaki gripped Black Star's arm, preventing him from doing anything stupid as he was wont to do. Liz and Patti were muttering to each other, dark looks on their faces. And Kidd, Mr. Lord's poor 'don't get him involved just yet' son, was clutching something, a crucifix, holy water? Something useful hopefully.

She had the stranger's stake, and considering herself to woefully under-armed, strolled nonchalantly into the centre of the room. The monologuing cut off, and for that at least she was thankful. The head honcho looked mighty offended.

"Don't let me interrupt, I'm just here to kill you," she said. "It wasn't part of my plans for tonight, but you had to be difficult."

"Slayer, it's your night to die," he growled. Vampires were so predictable, she didn't have that many one-liners. She used the same five jokes over and over again, despite knowing at least eight more. "Seize her! Hers is the first blood upon which I shall feast tonight!"

They charged.

She adopted a fighting stance, staking one immediately. She attacked the others with a combination of moves she didn't know the English for. Black Star did, and his eager commentary distracted the rest of the group from their fear and him from Tsubaki's slowly loosening grip.

"Spinning kick, undercut, right cross, palm shot, back kick, holy fuck she turned into dust, roundhouse-" they huddled crowd ducked as the vamp flew over them to smash into the speech giver. He was so caught up in relaying her every move and wincing sympathetically whenever she got hit, that what Tsubaki did next escaped his notice.

She let go of his arm, and breathing evenly she melted into darkness. She slipped intangible as a shadow across the room. Maka wasn't faring well, Black Star could tell, but when he moved to pry Tsubaki's hand from his arm to help she wasn't there. He looked around, fearfully, just in time to see her appearing across the room wrapped in tendrils of darkness. Tsubaki reached out her hands in a move hug at seemed tender until she snapped the vampire's neck. Black Star stared in shock at both Tsubaki and the vampire, who seemed merely mildly inconvenienced by his broken neck.

Black Star, encouraged by his desire to achieve greatness, sprang over the heads of the mostly cowering crowd to join the fray. Partially; he intended to come to Tsubaki's and Maka's aid, mostly; he didn't want to be upstaged by the girls. And that one, vaguely familiar guy who seemed to be fighting what appeared to be the good fight. Despite the fact that he looked like an evil villain from a cartoon.

"Need a hand, Slayer?" the stranger, who'd doubled back to the Bronze and seemed eager for a good brawl(which this was shaping up to be), said. "You seem a little swamped."

Maka grunted in response- according to Azusa, who'd seemed surprised at the question, mid-fight banter would become natural and easy with time but thus far she was discovering it was not her forte. She heard a sickeningly familiar snap, and hesitated, just a split second.

She spun around to see a vamp with its neck at an angle clearly marked 'broken' and an equal parts irritated and confused Tsubaki. In a fight like this she didn't have time to ponder the questions that flowed to the forefront of her mind, so she packed them all away in a file marked 'Tsubaki- Actually a Badass Motherfucker?'

Black Star had joined the fight if the loud ''YAHOO!'' was any indication, but he appeared to be utilising martial arts skills and strength within human capabilities. As a vamp crumbled to dust, she could see Liz and Patti(with a disturbing hungry look in her eyes) and Kidd who was warding off vampires with a small crucifix while the sisters ushered the crowd out the door.

Maka bent back to avoid what looked like a black lance ripping through a vamp. He groaned but didn't die, the weapon retracting. Tsubaki gestured, puzzled, with the very hand that had been a dark lance.

"I thought... A stab through the heart?"

"Has to be wood, not... Darkness," Maka demonstrated on the pitiful creature of the night writhing in agony on the floor. With the last of the vamps the cleaning lady's problem the next morning, Maka groaned and rolled her shoulders.

Liz, Patti and Kidd were waiting outside for them.

"Care to explain what the actual fuck just happened?" Liz asked, itching for a cigarette to soothe her ragged nerves. She'd given them up to save money, but she didn't really care too much about the family finances right now.

"It's long and complicated and can it please wait until morning?" Maka replied. "Meet me in the school library? First thing? It'll be open." She had training with Mr. Lord.

"Seriously, Slayer?" Mr. Tall, Dark and Mysterious said. "Cliffnotes Version: Vampire Slayer-" he pointed at Maka,"- those piles of dust? Vampires."

He left, stalking away quickly.

"Who are you?" Maka yelled, frustrated.

He didn't answer.

"Asshole!"

She could see his shoulders shake as he laughed to himself. She didn't see the knowing looks exchanged between Patti and Liz, but if she had she most certainly would've smacked them.


	2. Chapter 2

Maka was the last to arrive. The others were crowded around the central study table in the library, fidgeting nervously or painting nails, if they were Liz. They looked up as she entered. This was exactly what she wanted to avoid, a team, friends. People she would end up relying on who would trust her. That hadn't ended well the last time she tried it and it wouldn't end well this time either.

She looked around at those who had assembled. Kidd looked mighty offended that Mr. Lord hadn't elected to share with him Maka's true identity as the Slayer. He was a Watcher in training, after all.

"I'm sure you all have questions, and I will get to those. Eventually." Maka said. "First things first, I'm the-"

"Realist!" Shouted Patti. Mr. Lord shushed her, they were in a library. Admittedly it was an empty school library on a Saturday morning, but that was no excuse in his opinion.

"The Slayer. In every generation there is born one, a girl, chosen to defend humanity from all supernatural evils. When the old Slayer dies, a new Slayer is called to take her place-" she was repeating what her first watcher had told her, then it was as if she was reading the introduction from a copy of the Slayer's Handbook and gathering steam to recite all eight hundred pages of the text when she was rudely interrupted.

"So basically, despite the fact that you have super strength, an awesome destiny as the Vampire Slayer, and a short life expectancy, you're still a huge nerd?"

"Black Star!" Tsubaki chastised.

"What? We were all thinking it- she just repeated the literature Mr. L gave us to a T."

"He gave you... Slayer pamphlets?"

They all held up photocopies of the introduction to the Slayer's handbook. Maka pulled out a chair and sat down grumpily, folding her arms and puffing her cheeks out.

"So Maka's the Slayer," Patti was counting on the fleshy pads of her fingers. "Mistah L's the Watcher, and Kiddo's the baby Watcher'n'we're the humans and he's a tiny blue midget-"

"Hey!"

"-What're you?" She pointed at Tsubaki, who raised her hands defensively.

"I'm a shadow warrior," Tsubaki answered reluctantly. She seemed unwilling and unprepared to explain, but Mr. L stepped in, cleared his throat, and took the floor.

"Tsubaki, you are a Nakatsukasa are you not?"

"Yes. How did you- that's not the name I registered with," she frowned at him, puzzled.

"The Nakatsukasa family are an ancient family whose origins, though unclear, are tied to that of the ninjutsu style of fighting,"

"You an actual ninja? A real live ninja?"

"Oh no! Those who practised ninjutsu, at least at its origins, were inspired by the Nakatsukasa family gift. Although the connection between the shadow warriors and ninjutsu has been mostly forgotten due. We have become an obscure part of mythology unfortunately,"

"The Nakatsukasa are the last remaining shadow warriors, an ancient and powerful race born of darkness," Kidd said suddenly, taking almost everyone by suprise.

"Well remembered!" Mr. L exclaimed. Kidd ignored his father and nodded for Tsubaki to continue.

"Ninjas hide in the darkness," Tsubaki explained, "the shadow warriors... We are the darkness. Skilled members of my family can do it at any point, but I'm not at that level yet. I can't do it in direct sunlight, but if I continue to train hard, I'm sure I will someday."

She smiled, shrugging a little.

"So, does anyone have any questions?" Maka asked. "This is your last chance before you all go back to your mostly normal lives and never speak of this again,"

"What!?"

"No way!" Black Star cried indignantly, the first to recover. "We're like some kind of team now! That's how shit like this works. Maka can be Superman, and Tsubaki can be Wonder Woman, and I can be Batman, and the rest of you can be those other dudes on the Justice League no one cares about."

"We are not the Justice League-" Maka started.

"Yeah, the Avengers are _way _cooler," Patti interrupted, rudely,

"The Avengers are a bunch of pussies!"

"Are not!" Maka kneaded her temples.

"Are too!"

"ARE NOT!"

"ARE-"

"Quite the crack team of toddlers you've assembled, Slayer," Maka groaned at already familiar, too sexy/too annoying voice. "Sorry, am I late to the party?"

"You weren't invited." Maka ground out, before slumping into her folded arms.

"What and miss the inception of the Secret Seven?" He grinned, all sharp teeth and bright red eyes. "Not a chance, Slayer," he flopped into the only spare chair, hooking a leg over the arm.

Maka stood.

"Listen," she said, slamming her palms onto the table to get everyone's attention( Black Star and Patti were still squabbling and Liz was painting Tsubaki's nails a pretty plum colour). They all looked up. "We aren't the Justice League or the Avengers or the Secret Seven. I am the Slayer. He is my Watcher. You are a group of mostly normal students who will continue to do whatever it is mostly normal students do in their mostly normal lives. We are not a team."

"What about me?"

"You!" She rounded on him and raised his hand in sarcastic surrender. "You are a pain in my a- neck. A pain in my neck."

"Pfft,there's gratitude for you."

"Ugh!" Maka stormed out of the room, punching a large, ugly hole in the drywall on the way.

"Allow me to..." Mr. L skipped out of the room after her.

"Is he always so... Sunshine and sparkles?" Soul asked, glancing back at the group for answers. Kidd nodded without look up from the heavy leather bound tome he was engrossed in.

_He smiled, eyes twinkled,and suddenly they were swarmed and when a vampire ripped out his throat and pulled him down the complex sewer network before she couldn't do anything about it. There were too many of them. Far too many._

Deaton Lord found Maka pacing outside the Chem lab, muttering to herself and gnawing her fingernails. She raked a hand through her hair, mussing her bangs and loosening her pigtails. She yanked the ties out of her hair, ashy locks spilling down her back. Deaton could see the slight kinks in her hair from where she'd tied it up.

She sat on the ground, forlornly staring at the ties.

"I was thirteen, you know, when I was called," Deaton sat down beside her, "What kind of deity of faith decides that a thirteen year old is humanity's best hope against the forces of evil?" She snorted, and balled her fists up, "And I saved a girl. A little younger then me, she went to my school. She looked at me like I was some kind of hero. She even- she copied my hairstyle. Adopted it, putting her hair up in twin tails long after I'd stopped. She was- we were- she was my friend. And she got... She was... It was my fault. A Slayer is supposed to stand alone. He cut them off, you know, her twin tails. He gave them to me, said they were a present. He... Hurt her. And it was all my fault." She wrapped her arms around her knees and drew a shaky breath. The hair ties fell to the floor. "No more friends. No more team. Just you and me, Mr. L. No one else gets hurt because of me,"

"Maka, these people, they aren't like the friends you lost. You have to face the reality that the people closest to you will always be in danger. But that doesn't mean you should avoid having relationships with people, or letting them help you. Tsubaki will definitely be a powerful ally, and that white haired chap- he's saved your life, hasn't he?"

"Damn right I have," Maka buried her face in her knees. "Listen, Watcher, you have a fight to break up. I'll take the pep talk from here,"

"I can't,"

"Justice League vs. Avengers is getting out of hand. There have been blows," he drawled, lazily flipping a lighter over and over in his fingers. "Good god man, there are books at risk!"

Deaton hurried away.

"Go away," Maka said, voice muffled by the fact her face was buried in her arms. Contrary to her request, he sat down beside her.

"Slayer-"

"Maka. My name is Maka."

"Whatever. Listen, Slayer, that bunch you got in there-they're special. Not like whatever bog standard humans you had before. They've got strong souls." He moved beside her, picked up the discarded hair ties and combed his long slender fingers though her hair. "Slayer, you can't carry the world on your own,"

He parted her hair deftly, and tied it up in two neat pigtails.

"There, you look every bit the violent bookworm you are, Slayer,"

She stood quickly.

"Thanks," she said gruffly, rushing in the direction of the library, head down so he couldn't see her blushing profusely.

He stood, jammed his hands in his pockets and watched her walk away from him.

"Soul," he called after her, "Slayer, you can call me Soul."

He turned and left, just in time for her to spin on her heel and stare after him.

_She searched for hours when the sun came up, but she couldn't find a trace of him anywhere. Hiro was gone. He was gone. She was supposed to protect humanity, not put them at risk. He was gone. Hiro was gone._

"Alright, we're a team. To prevent any arguing Mr. L will have the honour of picking the team name," everyone looked at Mr. Lord expectantly. He spluttered a little, something about being honoured before nodding somewhat gravely and accepting the burden of naming the motley.

"Well?" Liz asked, impatiently. He glanced around at the bookshelves in the hope of divine inspiration.

"Spartoi," he answered decisively.

"I think I speak for most of us when I say that I have no idea what that is," Liz, self imposed spokesperson, said.

"Immortal Greek warriors grown from the teeth of drakons when planted and watered with blood," explained Kidd, well aware of both his fathers interest in classical mythology and the section of the library they were in.

"Well, that's fucking stupid," Liz declared, ignoring Mr. L's disheartened expression. "There. All done!"

"Thank you!" Tsubaki admired her nails.

"Whose next?" In the manner of the scene in the Prisoner of Azkaban(the movie, not the book) in which Harry volunteers to approach Buckbeak cautiously by virtue of everyone else back-pedalling, Maka volunteered.

She groaned and submitted to the torturous act of getting her nails painted a pretty colour of Liz's choosing.

_She screamed and cried and sobbed until she felt hollow. He was gone and it was her fault. She may as well have killed him herself. She should've protected him. She should never have let him patrol with her in the first place. It wasn't safe._

As much as Maka wanted to hate it, it was nice to have allies again. People she could pretend to be hanging out with while on patrol, people she could actually hang out with when not on patrol. People who were somewhat willing to help her research the beastie of the week. It was also nice, not having to lie to Kidd's face.

She trained hard, and the others fired questions at her whole she did so. Even as the Slayer, Maka had always had to work hard to be good at what she did.

And she wanted to be the best, not that there was a whole lot of official competition. She figured if she lived past the ripe old age of thirty, she'd be doing well.

Her bo staff cracked against Mr. L's.

"Define orbital,"

"A region in space in which there is a high probability of finding an electron,"

The staffs cracked again.

"How does a mass spectrometer work?"

"Particles moving at speed are separated on the basis of atomic weight."

_Crack!_

"Atomic radius?"

"Half the distance between the nuclei of two atoms of the same element, in gaseous state, in a stable covalent bond."

_Crack!_

"Down the periodic table the atomic radius..."

"Increases."

_Crack!_

"Why?"

"Increase in electrons, no increase in protons, protons have less hold on electrons." _Crack! "_Also complete sub levels and orbitals act as a shield or barrier to protons attracting other most electrons." _Crack! _"Other most electrons are easily lost, leading to a decrease in stability down the group as well." _Crack! _"The elements become more reactive," _Crack!_

Mr. Lord staggered, and Maka knew the training session was over. She needed to shower before her free period ended, then she had a Chem. test. She stepped back and put down the bo staff before leaving to shower and change.

_He was out there somewhere. Not he, it. It, it, it, it. A demon with his face__. And it was her job to hunt him down and kill him. It. Her responsibility_.

Her hair was wet when she entered the chemistry lab a minute late, apologies spilling off her tongue before she realised that her teacher Sid wasn't there. Someone was already timing the rumoured 'fifteen minute rule'. Maka sat down in her usual seat and pulled out her chemistry book for some last minute cramming.

Her hair had made her entire back wet by the time someone had called the fifteen minutes. Neither wanting to get in trouble nor wanting to be left alone, Maka stood up slowly and packed her things meticulously. It wasn't like Sid to be absent or late. That wasn't the kind of man he was. He liked teaching and he really believed in the power of a good education. He even took time out to coach the basketball teams after school, twice a week. He made everyone call him Sid, for god's sake.

Overcome with that ugly mix of Slayer curiosity and pessimism, Maka began to search the room for clues. She'd almost convinced herself that his absence was relatively benign when she opened the cupboard.

She stepped neatly out of the way of his falling corpse, with the morbidly practised ease of someone who has been hit by dead bodies falling out of cupboards on more then one occasion and who would rather not be hit be any more, thank you very much.

"Oh, Sid, what did you get yourself into?" She sighed.

No pulse. Cold. Large dent in the back of his head.

She was no doctor, but her preliminary diagnosis was that he was dead. She moved around the room, closing the blinds as she dug out her cellphone and powered it on.

"911. What's your emergency?"

"My chemistry teacher, Sid Barrett, is dead. I found him in the cupboard. He doesn't have a pulse, his skull is caved in a bit," Was she being too casual? She hadn't known him very long, but she was unfortunately used to untimely demises. Better act at least slightly distressed. "I'm, we're, I'm in the Chem. lab on the ground floor of the Doctor William Martin Academy in Death City, Nevada. Can you send someone to... I'm not sure... An ambulance? Maybe the police? Definitely the police."

"Sure thing...?"

"Maka. Maka Albarn,"

"Can you stay on the line, Maka? Someone'll be there in fifteen minutes." She seemed nice, and had a soothing voice.

"I can't. I need to.. I need to call the front office, let them know you're coming," Sid's death seemed positively mundane. Nothing supernatural. No bite marks, or evidence or ritualistic killing. She felt useless."I can't leave him there,"

She locked the door.

"I've locked the door and closed the blinds. No need to cause a panic,"

"Good thinking, you're being very brave, Maka,"

"I'll call the front office. Can I hang up?"

"I don't think-" Maka hung up.

She scrolled through her few contacts and called the front desk.

"The Doctor William Martin Academy, how may I help you?"

"There's an ambulance on the way. And the police. Send them to the downstairs Chem. Lab,"

"Oh my goodness! What happened? I'll get the nurse-"

"I think the nurse is sort of moot at this point."

"Oh my god! What happened?" She repeated. Her telephone voice was slipping.

"I'd rather not cause a panic," Maka said, nudging the debris that had fallen out of the closet with Sid out of the way with her foot. "I've locked the door,"

"I'm going to hang up now-"

"No, sweetie stay on the line! I'm sending the principal over right now-"the principal's office was beside the front desk "-there's no need to do anything rash-"

"What are you talking about? I'm pretty sure I'm doing the right thing here,"

"I promise you you sweetie, it does get better-"

"Oh. Oh, no. I'm not... I'm really touched by your concern, but I'm not the dead person in the room," she could hear the frantic attempts of the principal to open the locked door.

"Excuse me?"

"Sid's dead. I found him stuffed in the closet when I was..." She racked her brain for a reasonable excuse,"...looking in the closet," evidently, she didn't have a reasonable excuse.

"Yes, the lab's this way- we're on our way," she hung up. Maka opened the door and the principal stumbled in. She stepped neatly out of his way too.

When the emergency services arrived, they wrapped her in a blanket. They thought she was in shock. She'd been in shock before and the death of a man she barely knew didn't qualify. They said they'd be in touch, get her statement later. When she was feeling "more herself".

And Sid Barrett had a made the front page of the school newspaper, because he'd been a damn good basketball coach.

_She didn't like leaving her home alone with him on the loose, but what choice did she have- people still needed protecting. People would always need the Slayer, even if they didn't know it._

The next time Maka saw Sid Barrett she really wasn't expecting it.

She was on patrol, so she really shouldn't have been surprised when the dead crawled out if their graves and attacked her. Sid, however, with his blunt force trauma to the back of the head, took her by surprise.

The Spartoi had come with her. It was Friday night, so they didn't have school the next morning. Maka refused point blank to allow the others patrol with her on week nights. In fact, she didn't want them to patrol with her at all, but Tsubaki's 'I am the darkness and the darkness is me' thing was really useful and Black Star wanted to go where Tsubaki went. The Thompson sisters had enviable and terrifying aim with almost anything that fired projectiles and she couldn't just leave Kidd out, now could she?

So every Saturday and Friday night the whole obnoxious and fairly deadly gang of them went out on patrol to hunt and Slay some beasties.

"S'up Slayer," Soul, tall and already too familiar strode through the headstones. The Spartoi, her crack team of ragtag individuals that constantly had her back, dissipated into darkness. One of them did so quite literally. Maka groaned, glaring around at the empty space.

"Soul. I am patrolling," Maka said, still looking around. Kidd was behind the gravestone shaped like an angel. "Hence, very busy,"

"It looks pretty dead out here to me," Soul replied, glancing around at the various monuments to the dead, undead, and dust. Maka pressed her lips together in a vain effort to suppress the smile that tugged at the corners of her lips. It was an awful joke.

There was a sudden flash of movement in the corner of her eye, so Maka tackled Soul to the ground.

"Eager, aren't we Slayer?" Soul grinned, sharp teeth reminding her that he was falling on the wrong side of the human/nonhuman dichotomy but unfortunately still incredibly sexy.

"Shut up," she rolled off him and sprang to her feet. "There's something out there,"

He got up, complaining; "Excuses, excuses..."

But Maka wasn't even pretending to listen.

"Guys! Get your butts back here immediately!" She yelled, despite them not being even slightly out of earshot. "There's something out there,"

If her life had been a TV show they would've chosen this moment to cut to the battered bodies of her friends for dramatic effect. As it was, they all showed up pretty quickly and not even a little dramatically, crossbows raised and limbs transformed into spooky shadow weapons.

They stood in a tight circle, facing outward and on guard. Maka could hear a faint rumbling, getting louder as time passed, and judging by the murmurs of 'can you hear that?' and 'yeah, whaddya think it is?' the others could hear it too.

The ground burst open behind them, clods of earth smacking into their backs. Maka flipped neatly, landing on steady feet on the ground for which the same could not be safely said. There would be no easy way to explain the mud smeared across the back of her favorite leather jacket.

The others had scrambled to their feet loaded weapons pointed at the explosion's epicentre.

"Sid?" they queried in unison, with the exception of Soul who apparently did not recognize the former school basketball coach. And it was Sid, his own brand new headstone hefted on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. His dark skin had a blueish tinge to it and the clothes he'd been buried in were coated with a layer of mud. His cause of dead, the skull crushing blow to the cranium was carefully hidden under his favourite thick cloth hairband. He used them to keep his braids out of his way while he was working. He was unmistakably the same dead guy he'd been at his funeral.

He was unmistakably dead, not quite as dead as Maka had previously seen him but still dead.

"Maka, didn't you find Sid dead about a week ago?" Black*Star asked.

"He is dead,"

"I beg to differ," Soul dived out of the way of Sid's tasteful headstone. "He is not nearly dead enough for me," He grunted, and raised his forearm to block a second strike from Sid.

"Soul-"

The headstone cracked against his arm, broken cleanly in two and Maka just stared while Liz nailed Sid to a tree with a crossbow bolt. Maka rushed to Soul as Patti gleefully loosed another bolt, securing the former teacher's remaining free hand to the tree trunk.

Maka crouched beside Soul.

"Are you okay?" she pushed the shattered headstone away from Soul and grabbed his arm, inspecting it for injuries before he could protest.

He proceeded to do so anyway, of course.

"I'm fine!" He insisted, pulling his arm away. He tugged his sleeve down where she had pushed it up for closer inspection, "Not exactly one hundred percent human, here," he grinned, his pointed teeth flashing in the moonlight. "Not that it seems to bother you too much, Slayer,"

Maka stood up and stalked away, muttering about hot assholes who were not exactly one hundred percent pure human. She marched up to Sid, with the express purpose of jabbing a gloved, accusatory finger at the dead man.

"What are you?"

"Chemistry Teacher. Basketball Coach. Beloved Husband. Dead."

"More details on the 'dead' part of the equation, please," Maka said, folding her arms and tapping her steel encased toes in a manner that could be roughly translated as 'answer the question, or risk becoming more permanently dead.'

"Someone here knows the answer, someone else wants to know, and everyone should know that I can't give the answer,"

"Who knows the answer Sid?" Maka asked, brandishing her favourite axe menacingly.

"Only one person in the world could bring me back, and I'm not the only one he's 'saved', am I, Soul Eater?"

Soul darkened, strode over to the Chemistry teacher who'd made all the answers to the test Maka had studied so hard for B and punched him. Hard.

The dead man slumped, held up by crossbow bolts alone.

"C'mon," He said, yanking the bolts out and heaving the corpse over his shoulder, "we've got to see a doctor about a zombie,"

_Maka crept into the apartment, slipping off her shoes. Her mother, Kami, was asleep on the couch. __She'd fallen asleep there waiting for her. Maka who carry her to bed, amused by the extreme role reversal. She looked peaceful, curled under the fleecy blanket that was normally folded over the back of the couch. _

Since none of them could drive, or rather none of them had that ideal license/vehicle combination, they trekked across the city. They were no doubt taking the longest possible route that would keep them and the self exhumed basketball coach out of the public eye. He was no longer unconscious, but now hogtied and gagged.

The building they arrived at was the kind of building you yell at the people in horror movie not to go in. It was fenced off with a rusty chainlink and wallpaper with really old 'CONDEMNED' signs that were peeling away in thick layers. The name of the building, though barely visible was still legible, and did not inspire any kind of confidence

"The old City Morgue?"

"Abandoned in 1976 when the new hospital wing was constructed," Soul supplied,"But not, empty,"

"You can not be serious," Liz said, her crossbow drooping.

"Spooky abandoned buildings are prime real estate for all sorts of nasties," Maka explained.

"Including one Doctor Franken Stein,"

"Is he human?"

"He was, a long time ago, but he was so obsessed with his search for the Soul that he just kept... Replacing pieces of himself as they began to fail." The others were acting wary around Soul. Sid's statement and Soul's violent outburst in response had set them on edge. He'd also reminded them that he was something other then pure human, even if they didn't know what.

Soul hoisted Sid further up on his shoulder and marched up to the still remarkably sturdy wooden door. He banged his fist on the door a few times before yelling.

"Stein! Open the fucking door!" He stepped neatly back out of the way s's the door slammed open, cracking off the inside wall loudly and revealing a carnivorous darkness. Black Star peered into said darkness, but Maka followed Soul's example and stepped back.

An ominous echoing noise, or a would be ominous echoing noise, if not for the fact it sounded like a incompetent skateboarder on linoleum could be heard. This clattering, falling about noise grew louder, and the inept skateboarder probably grew closer, Maka extrapolated. The moderately ominous feeling completely dissipated when the rattling revealed itself in the form of a patchwork scientist scooting towards them on a battered looking office chair.

It became clear that he had not taken into account the door jamb.

They stared down at what could arguably be called a man. He was held together by clumsy but effective stitches, scar tissue, non medical grade staples, and a comically large screw. Tsubaki offered him his glasses, the wire framed spectacles had skittered across the floor and obtained several vision impeding scratches.

"Don't-" Soul growled, but Stein had already perched the damaged eyewear on his face and was unfolding his too long legs. He stood, peering over his glasses at them from an unnatural height. His spidery fingers twitched, and began fussing around Soul almost of their own accord. Soul stepped back, heaving Sid between them to act as a barrier of sorts.

"Whatcha take this time, Doc?" Soul asked,"Burn through another set of lungs already?"

The others looked at each other, puzzled. Maka, despite being puzzled also retained her expression of mistrust and professionalism.

"Doctor Stein here performs surgery in exchange for spare parts," Soul spat.

"It didn't seem to bother you too much, Soul Eater," Stein said, his face twisting into something ?Maka suspected was supposed to be a smile. "Not when you needed a little operation?"

"It's not like I knew what was happening, and even then I managed to make sure you didn't take any spare parts from me-"

"But it's not a permanent fix, you know that. Next time you're in need of repairs, there'll be a price. A hefty price for such a risky, intense procedure. Your eyes perhaps? Or your hands? Where would you be without your beloved music?"

"That's it," Soul swung at Stein who moved faster then anybody was prepared to anticipate and grabbed Soul's fist, squeezing it hard.

"No need for that kind of behaviour, we're all friends here,"

Soul's brow furrowed, and the knuckles stood out of Stein's greyish hands.

"Naughty boy. You aren't supposed to do that," Stein released Soul's fist, shaking his hand out. Maka slugged him.

"I have it under control." Maka wasn't sure who Soul was talking to.

Maka jumped over Stein's swooping leg and lashed out with her foot, kicking Stein hard in the ribs. He coughed and stumbled, but managed to duck the copper pipe that Patti had somehow acquired.

"You can feel it splitting apart, can't you? You won't be in control forever," He dodged Maka's superhuman speed Slayer strength right cross but not the left hook she followed it up with. "Your little do-good er act is slipping," he spat dull red blood on the the concrete.

Tsubaki's shadow arm ripped through the good doctor. Soul broke his nose. Maka shouldered him out of the way and he tripped over the abandoned Sid.

"How familiar. A Nakatsukasa. Been a while since I encountered a shadow warrior. You aren't like him though, dark and lonely and oh so dangerous. I'm sure your paths will cross very soon," He turned back to Soul, suddenly disinterested in Tsubaki.

"You can feel it, can't you? There's a darkness coming. A leeching insanity to infect us all. You'll be back to your old self, I never should have changed you. You were perfect. I can see the monster rippling through your skin, pulsing through your veins like a terrible promise. You'll come back to us one day, Soul Eater," He licked the slowly trickling blood, savoured the taste. "And I swear to you, I am not the only one looking forward to it. Someone has big plans for you,"

Maka stabbed his eye and the strange doctor fell silent, although no body felt that he was finished bothering them.

"Can you guys figure out what to do with this?" Maka gestured to the probably not entirely deceased physician, wiping her vitreous humour stained knife on her skirt. "I need to have a conversation with a certain someone," she grabbed Soul's ear lobe and led the protesting punk away.

_Maka bent to lift her and recoiled instantly upon contact. She was cold. She stumbled back across the room, falling over the coffee table and scrabbling for the landline. She didn't notice him until she stumbled into his chest. "Only me," he whispered. "You are mine alone."_

"You're a monster,"

He didn't deny it.

"I can't trust you,"

"I know," Soul didn't look like a kicked puppy. He looked like the dog that's in and out of the pound every two weeks and has accepted the constant rejection.

"Soul, you need to stay away from my friends,"

He nodded, and looked liked he wanted to say something before thinking better of it.

"And I want you to stay away from me."

He moved to touch her arm, grab her hand maybe, and she flinched away from the gesture. The hurt that crossed his face was unmistakable, no matter how quickly he tried to school his features into something reasonable.

"Soul, there's only one reason I'm not killing you right now and you need to get out of here before I lose my high moral standards," she stepped away from him. "You need to stay the hell away from me."


	3. Chapter 3

Maka's mood was subdued to say the least and the deep purple bags under her eyes served as a testament to the increasing vampire and demon population of the city. Soul seemed to be abiding by her wishes/death threat, more or less, and any time she did manage to catch sight of him she turned a blind eye for as long as it took him to notice her not seeing him and get out of her not sight. Her patrols were longer, and both more exhaustive and exhausting.

Nobody wanted to ask where Soul was of late, but Black Star who'd become quite attached to the snarky demi-human had asked the local barkeeps to keep an eye out for him under the ruse that money was owed in his direction.

Last night there'd been nine vamps in the first cemetery of the night and she'd stopped counting by the time she'd clocked into graveyard three. It had taken ages to get that much dust out of her hair. The others were tentatively dancing around her, curious as to a great many things but terrified of disturbing her increasingly frequent catnaps in those precious, safe(ish) daylight hours. Her grades were dipping, but with Mr. L and a no longer under the influence of a mad scientist Sid on her side it wasn't too severe a drop.

The last straw came when Tsubaki found her fast asleep in the library, tucked between the stacks with limbs at angles that couldn't possibly be considered comfortable. After careful consideration, Tsubaki retreated several steps and called Maka's name as loudly as is permissible in a public school library. The previous week had seen Black Star shake the Slayer to wakefulness and receive a black eye for his troubles. He told everyone who would listen and everyone who wouldn't that he got it in a fight and that they 'wouldn't want to see the other guy'.

"Maka. Maka!" Tsubaki called, ducking back when she sprang upright, fists raised defensively. "Maka, you need help."

"'M fine. Just a little busy at the moment,"

"You slept through two classes." And a free period. And lunch."You need help,"

"No I don't. I'm just a little busy at the moment, Tsu',"

"You said," Tsubaki replied,"Why don't I go out on patrol with you tonight?"

"No, you can't- you have school! You can't be out at all hours on a school night!"

"But you can?"

"It's not the same thing-!"

"Oh yes, how dare I forget the scared duty of the Slayer-"

"Yes, and defending the world from evil creatures of the night is my responsibility, not yours," Maka said stubbornly. "And it is also my responsibility to keep my friends and family safe, through whatever means necessary,"

"You need help," Tsubaki insisted, in that strangely gentle way of hers that meant that despite how soft spoken she seemed she was not to be taken lightly, "And I'm the most qualified to give it. Me, and Soul,"

"We can't trust Soul,"

"Why? Because he's not a full blooded human? I hate to break it to you, but we aren't in the pure human part of the population either Maka," Tsubaki demonstrated by melting her hand into the shadows created by the shelves.

"Tsu', I don't want you or anyone else to get hurt,"

"Maka, I'm not going to get hurt. I don't even have to be corporeal at night. Let me help you," Tsubaki pleaded gently, her big inky eyes sad and doeful.

"Fine. But just you. No Soul, and no Spartoi,"

Yeah, then that lasted all of two days.

_She heaved onto the carpet. Her fault. She hadn't wanted her to worry, hadn't told her that... Why had she been so stupid? All her fault. Her hands shook as she scrubbed her mouth clean, and as she finally reached for the phone she couldn't even make out the numbers, vision blurry with tears. It was all her fault._

With all of them out patrolling every evening they were dispatching the undead with increased efficiency and reasonable nights' sleep were acquired all round. Nobody's schoolwork was suffering, and under Tsubaki and Maka's careful tutelage, Black Star's grade climbed enough that he was for once passing more classes than ones he was flunking.

Maka hadn't seen Soul in weeks, and although she didn't admit to missing his presence while patrolling she did miss him. But despite Tsubaki, and Black Star's, best attempts to bring Soul back into the Spartoi, she couldn't trust him one iota. An iota being, for those of you not in the know, an imaginary quantity used to represent the square root of minus one which does not exist. Therefore, it could be concluded that she did not trust him at all, no matter how much she wanted to be able to.

Everything was going okay. It wasn't perfect, by any means- vampire and demon encounters were increasing steadily, and many of them escaped people piles of ashes or dust and others were claiming to be the forwarders of some kind of apocalypse. Apocalypses were ten a penny in Maka's experience though, so she wasn't too worried about it.

Yet tonight was strangely quiet, and there was talk of heading towards the Bronze. It would be nice to have a break, everyone had to agree. Maka was suspicious, she had yet to encounter zero vampires on any patrol. Ever. Her Slayer instincts had yet to fail her, so she sent the others ahead to the Bronze as nonchalantly as she could.

"I'll catch up later!' She chirped. "I just want to do one more quick sweep."

They looked at her sceptically, but she waved them off- she had more important things to worry about. Maybe. Slayer instincts were rarely wrong. But they might be. Just this once. Wrong.

She headed back to the most popular cemetery in Death City, and sat herself on the ground, leaning against a headstone. She settled herself in for a long wait, crossing her legs and focusing on extending her senses out beyond herself, like Azuza had taught her. She waited.

And waited.

Waited some more.

Waited just a bit longer.

Waited until she felt like abandoning what seemed like a fruitless venture.

Then waited for just a bit longer, just in cause.

And finally, someone showed up.

It was not the someone she was expecting- at this point she was expecting one of the Spartoi, impatient or worried. She stood quickly, jumping to her feet and welding her favourite axe.

He was tall, taller even than Soul. On the sanity spectrum he appeared to be well in the zone prefixed 'in'. In his hands he held a blade and it was wrapped in darkness. It clung to him, a needy parasite, tangible as Tsubaki's shadow weaponry, pulling his once-handsome face out of shape.

His hair was long, black and dull and his eyes... His eyes were the same dark, barely indigo of Tsubaki's. He looked a lot like Tsubaki, he might've been her brother. Or at least a cousin.

He was watching her with a morbid kind of fascination, not like Stein-who looked at her like he'd wanted to take her apart piece by piece to see if he could put her back together again-, but like he wanted to see how loudly he could make her scream. And not in the fun way.

He raised his arm lazily, then abruptly twisted his hand. A lance of darkness surged forth, and Maka dived out of the way, the weapon stabbing into her side. She felt it change shape inside her and it was agony as he sliced outwards, the lance now a double edged sword cutting through her flesh with ease. She pushed the skin together, holding it and willing her Slayer healing to work this out.

A second lance hit her shoulder. She moved to away to remove it, but it changed shape, swelling in size, and her quick step backwards ripped the much larger weapon from her shoulder with no small degree of discomfort. Her voice, reduced to a feral, pain filled cry, filled the empty silence of the night.

She was dizzy with blood loss and stumbled, her head cracking against the gravestone she'd been leaning against. The stars looked so bright and everything seemed so far away.

He was standing over her, and her vision became clouded with darkness. She tried to get up, but he pinned her to the ground with spears of darkness in her hands and feet. When did he do that? Everything hurt so much she hadn't even realised. He carefully probed at the injury in her left shoulder, seeming disappointed at her lack of reaction. He dragged the blade through her skin, from her shoulder to her right hip.

It cut right through her bra, which she was annoyed at, under the gaze of pain and blood and screaming. Screaming cause it hurt, screaming cause maybe someone would hear it.

The blade hovered over her again, but Soul dived into view and all the unnatural darkness went away and the stars were so, so bright and beautiful and far away. Everything was far away. All the pain, and the shouting, even Soul leaning over her, expression fearful.

"Don't. I love your smile." She reached out to touch his face, but all she did was leave a bloody smear across his cheek.

He scooped her up in his arms, knowing there was only one person on this earth who could save her. The Slayer's life wasn't going to come cheap.

_Kami's had been peaceful, but Tsugumi... She'd been crucified, a grim parody of what should've protected her. Nailed to the wall. INRI - 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews' - scrawled in her own blood. And. 'We will live forever together in paradise'._

"Hello sister," he looked pleased to see her. Like he'd been looking forward to this for a really long time, but also like he knew exactly how this was going to go down and couldn't be more pleased with his predicted outcome.

Tsubaki said nothing, glad his attention was on her. It wasn't fair of him to use her friends to get her to notice him, not when she'd been working so hard not to see him. There were a lot of things about him that weren't fair. He shouldn't have allowed himself to become consumed by the darkness in his eagerness to become stronger than her. He should've been happy with the way this were. Maybe not happy, but okay. He was supposed to be her big brother.

All she had ever wanted was for him to be proud of her.

Fuck that. He'd ruined everything and she was done.

Done turning the blind eye. Done running from him, and her family and her responsibility. Maka had never run from her responsibility, no matter how much it had hurt her in the past. She felt her arms transforming into deep, dark shadow. They retained their shape. She would be stronger, faster, and sharper than the others had ever been allowed to see her. It was nice, not to hold back.

Her strength had caused her all the worst problems she'd had in life, and now she was going to use it to fix things. She could make things better. There was no point in hiding.

His shadows were crept towards her, like he didn't want her to notice them, as if he could hide that part of himself from her.

"Aren't you glad to see me little sister?" Why was he- he wanted to hurt her. He wanted her friends to know exactly what he was saying. Why else would he speak English?

She felt his darkness, running towards her like water, wrapping around her legs and rooting her to the ground.

"You've gotten so big and grown up!" His darkness, laced with madness was trying to suffocate her. Her friends could not see her, but she could see them. "It was hard to find you, out here on the Hellmouth. I never would've looked here. A dangerous place for someone who exists on the brink of darkness,"

Five years would do that, she thought bitterly. Five years of running. Hiding. Like a coward.

He had hurt her friend. Her family. Her.

"Your pet Slayer is not very impressive is she? But I never would've found you if she hadn't shown up? You can't play the hero and stay in the shadows, little sister. You couldn't resist, could? Saving people, killing monsters? It's in the blood that pumps through your soft, sweet heart."

She couldn't breathe. She felt it burning in her bones, an infectious insanity bleeding in the shadows she control. She bit down to hold in bubbling hysteria.

"You didn't think the news of a Nakatsukasa wouldn't get out, did you? The whispers and the beasties that got away, they came to me. They knew I was looking for my dear, darling sister,"

Liz and Patti had mid-calibre guns trained on him- where they stashed those was a mystery Tsubaki did not want solved- and Black Star was wielding a sword in a two handed grip. "She's not going to hold up against Asura when he gets here. Are you ready to greet him, little sister?"

This was her fight. Hers. It always had been.

He could not really think he had control over this darkness. In this place. Against her. He could not really be so stupid and blind.

He had done nothing but leant her strength.

Her hands twisted suddenly, and sharp spears of darkness impaled her brother from all directions. She couldn't make out his expression of shock, her vision had become blurred somehow. She moved her hands apart with a painful wrenching movement and the darkness holding what was left of her brother together ripped him apart.

She fell to her knees and her blurred vision became loud, ratcheting sobs. He had never been strong enough to beat her. She had not been running to keep herself safe. He was a fool.

A dead fool.

Black Star's muscled arms wrapped around her. For once in his life, he kept his mouth shut.

_Meme had fought bravely and her death had been no less gruesome then the others. Her own intestines ripped from her gut and used to string her up, leave her hanging from the tree. The cherry blossom tree they'd had their first kiss under, the one Hiro had been so determined to carve their names into. He hadn't been able to, and eventually Maka had caved and carved. "You promised me forever,"_

Maka never woke slowly. She always woke up all at once, ready to beat the crap out of anyone standing near by.

She bolted upright, and upon finding herself unable to recognise her surroundings searched for some kind of weapon. She was hooked up to and IV, and despite knowing exactly how painful it is to rip an IV out of your arm, ripped it out of her arm.

She had no idea what the fuck they were pumping into her, and she didn't want to risk it interfering with her attempts to escape wherever she found herself. But still, that had hurt. Like, ow. She was wearing a stupidly patterned hospital gown. She sighed at the sad state of affairs before swinging her legs out of the bed. Her bare feet recoiled from the cold concrete floor.

Soul was asleep in an armchair that had seen better days. Seen better days a very long time ago. The leather was split and peeling away from the yellow foam.

She glanced around for something resembling clothes that meant she wouldn't feel a breeze on her ass and wasn't patterned with garish elephants doing handstands.

Nothing.

She yanked the plasticky hospital sheet up from the bed and wrapped herself in it. It was undignified, but thankfully less drafty. She nudged Soul's sleeping form with her foot.

He didn't wake.

Despite how still he appeared, Maka could see the nightmares brewing. His eyes were daring around behind his eyelids and his face shone with a thin sheen of sweat. His fists clenched, gripping handfuls of exposed upholstery foam and ripping it away from the chair's frame.

He was muttering, words that were either unintelligible or in a language she didn't recognise. Either which way she had no idea what he was saying. His nails were growing long and pointed and black, his veins becoming knots that contrasted darkly with his skin. He dug long slashes into what was left of the armchair, his new finger nails piercing the thick material with ease. His teeth, visible as his lips moved faster and faster, muttering escalating to yelling, became long and sharper, the speech she'd not been able to comprehend becoming more garbled.

The only word she was able to recognise was her name.

He sliced at his arms, long cuts leaking black blood that becomes black blades protruding dangerously from his forearms.

She stepped back afraid, and slipped on the plasticky sheet she was using to protect her modesty. She hit the bed farm and it skittered across the floor to hit the wall opposite with a sizeable bang.

He leapt at her, kicking away from the armchair like some kind of feral animal. She rolled out of the way and stood up, dodging frenzied swipes. She kicked him high and hard, trying to remember that he was asleep. It was like kicking a re-enforced steel door, a comparison she made from experience.

"Soul!" She yelled, hoping to wake him up. She knew you aren't supposed to wake a sleepwalker, but she didn't know how long she could keep this up. That kick should have sent him flying, would've put a dent even in the steel door, but he barely noticed.

"Soul!" She yelled again, dancing out of his reach. "It's me, Maka! Soul, wake up!"

She punched him, hard and fast, her fist crunching against his nose. She winced, falling into a defensive pose favouring what felt like a broken hand. It would heal quickly, but not that quickly.

"Soul-" her voice cut off as he seized her throat and pressed the black blades against the fragile skin he found there. She swallowed, her small Adam's apple scraping again the blade. "Soul please. It's Maka. Please wake up. Please,"

The grip slacked, and he blinked slowly before shoving away from her. He stares and the blades and the blood pooling on them, as they revert to a liquid that splatters on the ground and runs down his arms. His confusion turned to horror as he pieced to get her the events of what happened.

He stepped back, eager to put even more space between her and him. She moved towards him and her throws his arm up to keep her at bay.

"Soul, it's alright," Maka said soothingly, like she's talking to a spooked animal. "I'm fine,"

"I could've hurt you-"

"No you couldn't . Not seriously, anyway," She replied, gently reminding him of the miracle of Slayer strength and healing.

"You don't understand! I'm not like you. I'm a monster, you were right to stay away from me. I'm broken, and I can't be fixed."

"Nothing's irreparable," Maka lied.

"Bullshit,"

"Yeah, okay, but you are not broken Soul,"

"I am breaking, and Stein won't fix me again. I'm falling apart,"

"Soul-"

"Don't say it like that! I'm a monster, Maka, and not in a tortured, brooding tragic emo hero way. 'I'm a monster in an I'll kill you when the seams break' way. You want to know why they call me Soul Eater, since your big brain couldn't figure it out? My soul is so corroded and broken and partial, shards of a whole that I never really had until Stein stitched it together as best as he could. I was a monster, am a monster. Seeking out souls and devouring them like Hallo'we'en candy doesn't make you anything but,"

"And all that's holding me together is falling apart and you need to stay the hell away from me and whatever it is I have that Stein managed to trick into thinking it's a soul,"

Beads of red blood were dripping away from the cuts on his arms. Maka could see scars were he had drawn his strange weapons before. She reached upward and cupped his cheek.

He leaned into her touch.

Before she was entirely confidant in her decision making process considering her fairly recent head injury, she was kissing him.

It was sweet to begin with, but it didn't stay that way for long.

_Anya, she'd fought too, bitterly and fruitlessly until he had stretche her between two trees and given her a monstrous crown of molten bronze, a cruel death he'd taken from game of thrones. It had burned away her fair skin and pretty golden hair. "You will be my queen,"_

She sat up, painfully aware of exactly how naked she was. They were. It was really cold.

He sat up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She wasn't entirely sure she was happy with just how right his arms felt around his waist. He was peppering soft, open-mouthed kisses on her neck and shoulders as one of his hands started creeping downwards to stroke at her soft curls.

She leaned into him briefly, before pushing away and twisting to face him, arms akimbo.

"That was a bad idea," she informed him.

"All the best ones are," he said. Maka ignored him, which was hard considering just how good he looked naked and marked with the hickeys she'd given him. The bruises were dark, much darker then any kind of normal, human hickey.

Neither of them were any kind of normal human though, so that was okay.

She glanced around for her clothes, or any clothes really. She stood and Soul leaned back grinning and admiring the view. She flushed at the memory of all the places those sharp unnatural teeth had scraped against and just how good it had felt. All she could see of hers was the garish hospital gown, so she grabbed his heavy leather coat and slipped it on. His expression changed from appreciative to smug.

She folded her arms and pouted before throwing his jeans at him. They smacked his face, and she giggled at the absurdity of the situation. He pulled on the jeans and stood.

"You should be resting,"

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"Bed rest and plenty of fluids. Only thing for major surgery recovery."

"Because you've really been enforcing that,"

"Eh, close enough," he scooped her up in his arm and tossed her onto the rather rickety bed.

"I'm not sure how well this will hold up,"

"No sex, just sleep,"

"But I'm not tired," She pouted petulantly.

"Yes you are," He smirked.

"Don't- shut up. I'm recovering from major surgery,"

"It's not the only thing you're recovering from,"

"Argh- just get over here and tell me a story,"

"How old are you?" Nevertheless, he did as she asked.

Once they were both settled, which took a far amount of wriggling, he started.

"Once upon a time there was a very unhappy couple. The reason they were unhappy was because they had no children.

"The father set out one day to change that and brought home a beautiful black haired, brown-eyed baby boy. This made the mother unhappy, she did not want to raise a child she had no claim to, and she could not trust her husband anymore for the child had his eyes, but he was not hers.

"So the mother wished that her husband know the pain of raising a child that was not his, and an angel called Anyankah answered her prayers. The mother fell pregnant and eventually gave birth to a a strange, inhuman child, for Ankyakah had not been an angel, and was instead a demon.

"The child she had given them was unlike any other child. He had snow white hair, eyes the colour of blood and sharp, pointed teeth,"

"Gee, I wonder who that could be,"

"Shut up. You're ruining a perfectly good cliche here,"

"Am not,"

"Do you want to hear the story or not?"

She nodded, curling into his chest.

"Anyway, this little boy was growing up to be devilishly handsome, normal as could be expected in that dysfunctional-ass family where his mum was brimming with regret and dying his hair regularly and generally keeping the whole thing under wraps,

"But on the day the boy turns eleven-"

"So, on his eleventh birthday?" Maka interjected.

"Whatever. Just let me tell the story. Everything changes, and he's not such a normal little boy anymore. See, his teeth split right through his gums and crack off the neat little veneers and mangle eighteen months of obsessive orthodontia. The dye burns away and his eyes turn bright, bright red. The optic variation on Rudolph's nose kind of red. And he can feel his blood boiling inside him. And he wants to rip open his skin so he claws at it and it bleeds, black, diamond hard blades that hurt and he's so, so hungry and he rips open his father, who made a mistake and his mother who made a bigger one and his brother who'd made none at all an devours their souls.

"But it's not enough. So he wanders for a long time, devouring innocent souls and not so innocent souls alike. He's not fussy.

"Until a MA, falling apart scientist finds him and promises he can make the hunger stop, make the uncontrollable, powerful knives of hunger stop and the blades disappear for good and make him better,

"So the monster walks into the city morgue and something that could be a man walks out,"

"How long did it take you to write that?"

"I have a way with words. It just flowed naturally,"

"Liar." Maka accused.

"I may have thought about it once or twice. It's not like I actually wrote it down anywhere,"

"So that's not what's written on this sheet of paper in your pocket?"

"Pfft, no- where did you get that?"

"Your jacket. The one that I'm wearing,"

"You little-"

"Oh, get over it, you huge dork. It was a great story. Loved the ending. Very melodramatic,"

"It's not over,"

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I thought it best to leave out the part where I met the most annoying Slayer in the history of the world and somehow ended up kind of liking her,"

"I kind of like you too,"

"Of course you do. Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up, unless I either have to go pee at exactly the wrong moment or charmingly return with breakfast after a brief panic on your part,"

Maka smiled, and curled into him. She didn't care how uncomfortable sleeping with a leather jacket was, she wasn't going to ruin the moment shedding it and sleeping naked.


	4. Chapter 4

Sneaking across town and breaking into her own home wearing nothing but a leather coat had never been part of the plan, yet here she was. After squeezing through the tiny window and trekking barefoot across Death City during evening rush hour with a grumpy demon and realising she didn't have her keys- 'they were in my pocket, Soul! My pocket that is part of my clothes that we had to leave behind just so you could avoid Stein'- she was standing approximately four stories below the balcony of her father's apartment. According to him, the glass door hadn't opened since before he moved there. The lack of adorable balcony plants made it easy to pick out.

Soul stood guard as she sized up the drain pipe. It would hold. Probably. She was pretty tiny. She gave it an experimental shake. It rattled unreassuringly.

She tightened the belt of the coat with resolve.

"Stay here. Yell if anyone comes. I'll buzz you in. Do not look up,"

He grinned at that and she smacked him.

"Ow!"

"Sorry. I don't always know my own strength," she smiled, sheepishly.

She made quick work of the wall, before leaping across two balconies to end up on her own. She grasped the door's handle and turned it. She could hear the rusted mechanisms snapping inside the handle, and it came off in her hand. She groaned, and attempted to shimmy the door open. It wriggled a bit, and she could see flakes of rust and paint coming free.

But as she found she didn't have the patience, she smashed the glass. It broke easily under the duress of Slayer strength and it was a simple matter to knock a hole big enough for her and avoid standing on the shards in her bare feet. She waved down at Soul to go to the door before she buzzed him in.

She answered the door while still wearing his jacket.

"Come on in,"

"I'm not a vampire. I can enter dwelling places without any difficulty,"

"Suit yourself," She went to get changed, and Soul followed her, picking up knickknacks and inspecting them as he went. Maka's room was neat, but she didn't seem to have any personal effects. There were no photos of her friends or family, either the old ones or the new. The book shelf was full to bursting, though.

Maka threw the doors of her wardrobe open with a bang, and Soul whirled to inspect the source of the noise. Her clothes were divided neatly in half, lots of sweaters and pastel colours to the left, bright reds, blacks and leather jackets to the right. Along the bottom were five pairs of heavy, steel toed boots, and behind them, dusty, unpacked boxes.

She stripped herself of the coat, looking down at the line of stitching stretched from shoulder to hip, and the various other places she needed to be held together.

"Do you think it'll scar?"

Soul wasn't expecting that. He'd seen the scars across her back, the ones marring her legs and her arms and the tiny adorable one on her lip and the worrisome bite scars on her neck. Not every sharp toothed demon was as careful giving hickies as he was. He didn't think she'd care about scars anymore, seeing as she had so many, a silvery lattice across her pale skin. Could she even remember how she got them?

But he wasn't going to lie.

"Yeah. That's going to leave a bitch of a scar,"

"Oh. I wouldn't mind," she lied "Only they can be hard to explain to people who don't know without someone calling the police,"

"You look beautiful," he said, calculatedly off-handed, "You know that, right?"

"You're only saying that cause I'm naked," she replied matter-of-factly, stepping into a pair of underwear patterned with tiny sheep.

"Especially 'cause you're naked,"

"Well, too bad," she said, pulling a sports bra over her head. "Hand me some socks, they live in the second drawer,"

She pulled a tank top on over the bra and shimmied into a skirt before sitting on her bed to pull on the socks Soul handed her.

"Can you grab me some shoes? And a jacket?"

He tossed her a jacket, the one she'd been wearing when he met her, if he had to guess, and held some boots in her direction. She shoved her feet into them, started lacing one, and kicked him as gently as she could in the shoulder. He sighed, and started tying the laces of the boot she was waving in his direction.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Soul asked as Maka jumped up, and grabbed one of the many crucifixes she kept by her beside.

"Something is going on," Maka weighed a few weapons from the chest at the end of her bed in her hands in turn, before slipping a knife in her boot and slinging a crossbow across her back.

"Something like a surprise party or?" Soul asked hopefully.

"Something more akin to Armageddon," she offered him a sword and sheath, which he shoved into his belt before shrugging into his coat.

"Damn," he said, "Guess we have to skip breakfa-dinner,"

"We can grab something on the way to the library,"

_Azusa's keen eyes stared up at her. The rest of Azusa was nowhere to be seen.__"Come and find me, my love. Azusa simply can't wait to see you."_

"What do you mean you don't know where she is?" Mr. L was paced, furiously cleaning and re leaning his glasses. It was irritating the others, but with Maka goodness knows where (and Tsubaki out of the running, though no one wanted to say it to his face that he was third in the leadership queue) he was in charge.

"We were kind of distracted by the fact that Tsubaki had just ripped her brother apart and seemed just a little bit traumatised by the whole ordeal," Kidd defended, looking up from his careful organisation of the library in a system that was most certainly not the Decimal one as Black Star loudly shushed him. Tsubaki was asleep, her head resting in his lap, eyes still puffy and red.

"She's probably with Soul," Liz shrugged, swiping at her nails with a cotton ball soaked in acetone.

"I'm not sure that's such a good idea. He can't be trusted. And do you have to do that here? It really reeks, Liz," he wasn't too happy with the volatile liquid's proximity to the literature either.

"Not normal, but he'd never hurt Maka," Liz replied, ignoring the second part of Mr. L's inquiry.

"Probably," Patti added, grabbing the nail polish remover and tipping it on a rag before scrubbing the gun part in her hand. She had taken over the centre table of the library with the vast collection of weaponry she and Liz had been keeping in the motel. How it had all been stashed in there was a mystery to them all.

"Yeah, he wouldn't hurt her intentionally- don't use that on the polymers, Patti," Liz said, barely looking up.

"'M not an idiot, sis," Patti rolled her eyes.

"I have a feeling his intentions aren't quite as pure as you seem to think," Mr. L said, frowning as Patti reassembled the gun parts she'd been working on, with a level of focus she never applied to anything that couldn't blow holes in someone.

"Sex? Is that what your worried about, Mr. L? All the kids are doing it these days,"

"Not this Kidd," Kidd flipped open the book in his hand and scanned the table of contents.

"Kidd, what the fuck? I was on a roll. And you just, cut right into it. Rude. Where was I? Maka's a big girl, she can operate a a condom," Liz selected a dark burgundy colour, from the vast collection of colours she'd brought from the motel "Does this colour say 'end of the world' to anyone else?"

"Actually, sis, Mistah L, Maka's on the pill. I'd go for a bluey-grey, Liz,"

Liz nodded, and plucked an appropriately gunmetal blue colour entitled 'Goodbye, Lover'.

"How do you know that?" Mr. L asked, weighing a handgun in his hand. Patti glared, and he put it down quickly.

"She likes to be regular," Patti shrugged. "And have safe sex, I guess,"

"Patti! What have I told you?" Liz snapped, shaking her hand to dry the first layer of colour.

Patti sighed, setting down the gun before saying, in a singsong voice: "Two forms of contraception, one for you and one for them!"

"Atta girl,"

Mr. L sighed and made eye contact with Kidd, who looked just as baffled.

"So, nobody knows where she is?" Black star asked quietly. And it was real people quiet, not Black Star quiet.

"I'm sure she'll turn up," Kidd said, sitting cross legged on the floor. "Hopefully, before the impending apocalypse,"

"I'm gong to do some research on this Asura fellow. See if he has any qualities besides been the harbinger to the end of the world, weaknesses, even,"

Black Star eased himself out from under Tsubaki's sleeping form. She shuffled sleepily, before settling back down

"I can help! I'm great at research," He boasted. "It's way cooler to read about the end of the world than the some dead presidents who sucked at their jobs,"

_Her fault. It was her duty to keep them safe. She should've protected him. All her fault. _

Seven hours. That's how long it took them to come across even a scrap of useful information. Actually, they found several scraps, but with occult research online and on paper, everything had to taken with a grain of salt, a wooden stake and a whole lot of caution.

There was a white board with everything they had learned about scrawled on it in dry-wipe marker. There was a dick scrawled in the corner in permanent marker, but hey, it was public school. Apart from the penis, the white board read something like;

'ASURA

Evil

End of the world

Son of death

Bringer of madness

Guardian of the Hellmouth(?)'

There was nothing about killing him, because presumably, he'd never before shown up on this mortal plane.

They were all exhausted, and books were heaped everywhere. Kidd was at the stage of researching where a book had to be retrieved if he wanted to research without compulsively organising the library in a way he found both aesthetically and academically pleasing.

Liz had deflected her attention to the Hellmouth, while Patti drew a giraffe on a sheet of paper she'd taken from the printer. Kidd held his hand out and Tsubaki passed him another book. Black Star was reading a big old tome and being strangely industrious, eager to prove that he was the best at researching. Mr. Lord was out in the hall, yelling down the phone to a cranky Council member. Admittedly, he'd disturbed the poor man's sleep in order to garner information.

He slammed the door when he came storming back in, grumpier then they'd ever seen him.

"Hey, I might have something here," Liz said, popping her gum loudly. " 'the mouth of hell lies at blah blah blah' but look, someone drew a little ring around the 'mouth of hell' part and drew a line out to the margin where they wrote in something that is either coordinates or a phone number,"

"Let me see!"

"Patti, calm down," Deaton said, making a vaguely placating gesture in her direction and lifting the book out of Liz's arms,"Does anyone have a smartphone?"

"Why?"

"Just because I'm a librarian, doesn't mean I don't understand the merits of Google," he retorted, "Do you have an iPhone or not?"

"Jeez, old man, calm down," Liz fished an iPhone with a cracked screen and an apparently inadequate cover out of her bra. "Hand me the book,"

Mr. L handed her back the book, and she frowned at the numbers, briefly.

"Is she really going to google it?"

"Hush, Black Star," Tsubaki chided, watching Liz carefully.

"And I suppose you have a better idea, do you?" Patti leapt to her favourite sibling's defense.

"You're only on her side because she's your sister!" Black Star insisted, folding his arms and leaning back on two legs of his chair to put his legs up on the table, boots landing right in the middle of a valuable 17th century text.

"Black Star! Take your feet off that book before I cut them off!" Mr. Lord threatened, brandishing a scimitar. Black Star removed his feet before Mr. Lord could.

"I'm on her side cuz she's smarter'n you!" Patti stuck out her tongue.

"That really isn't ladylike, Patti," Kidd said, without looking up, least he see the chaos he was sitting in.

"You're not ladylike!" She shot back, feeling very defensive all of a sudden.

"Everyone, shut up!" Liz snapped, before clearing her throat. "Siri, what is at thirty-six-point-one-eight-two-two degrees north one-hundred-fifteen-point-nine-nine-nine-two degrees west,"

"Why, you are Liz!" Siri answered brightly as the ground began to rumble unsettlingly.

_"With all your friends dead, with all of them gone, all that sacrifice and it still wasn't enough, could never begin to hope to be enough to stop me, how could you, all on your own, with no Watcher and no mommy and no friends to hide behind, how could you possibly hope to be enough?" His face was twisted into a cheap, malevolent copy of the smirk she had loved._

The school was quiet, but the densely swirling matrix of cloud and the flashing lightening directly overhead did arouse some suspicion. Maka broke into a run, trying desperately not to spill the coffee she and Soul had picked up at Starbucks all over herself. Soul clutched the box of donuts to his chest and sprinted after her. It might be like that time Black Star had cast some kind of absurd spell by accident and everyone had swapped sexes.

So it might be nothing.

But it might also be something.

Which is why they were running like hell but not sacrificing the caffeine in order to get there with speed.

A janitor looked up as they rushed past, sighed and looked back down. He seemed to be ignoring, like the vast majority of the population of Death City, his own probable impending doom.

They burst into the library to find that all hell had broken loose. The floorboards had splintered outward, rippling away from a gaping hole where the central table used to reside. The table itself was on its side and Patti, Liz and Kidd were crouched behind it. Kidd was reloading a shotgun, as Patti waited for her chance and Liz was using her compact to spot for opportunities to shoot. Deaton, Black Star and Tsubaki were behind the counter. They were aiming crossbows over the edge. Black Star fired.

The bolt moved slowly through the air, as if it was treacle, before shattering against a final barrier.

In the centre of room, above the hole that led to somewhere Maka did not feel like even considering, hovered a man. Or a demon in the shape of a man. The very approximate shape of a man, wrapped in strips of skin that clung to his frame, outlining his protruding bone and lean, coiled musculature. His matted hair hung in a thick fringe over this forehead and three vertical eyes darted around, savouring the details of the library. He didn't appear to have either a nose or any injuries which was both discomfiting and discouraging.

His eyes landed on her and she felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on her. She was terrified, scared to move. She seized Soul with her free hand desperate to get away from the demons terrible, terrible gaze. She wanted to look away, break eye contact, but she found it impossible.

Then he demon looked away from her, and though still afraid, she was no longer paralysed by fear. Maka dived behind the counter and Soul elected to follow her excellent example.

"Starbucks?" She offered sheepishly. She glanced at Soul, he was breathing fast aswell, and his hands shook. He clenched them into fists, and Maka could see his too-dark veins. He she'd his coat, tucking it under the counter for safe keeping.

"Thank you," Deaton seized a cup, and Tsubaki and Black Star descended upon the caffeinated beverages with equal zeal. Soul took another, silently offering the box of slightly squashed donuts around.

"So, what's the stitch?" She asked, loading her crossbow quickly.

"Evil dude is tryna kill us something fierce, Kim," Soul said, have chugged his cup of joe in record time.

"Don't put on that ridiculous accent. And my name's not Kim," Maka said, puzzled.

"She's a cartoon character and she- nevermind," Soul sighed. "Who is that guy?"

"Asura, guardian of the door to hell,"

"He doesn't sound like a bad guy,"

"Well he's harbinger to the Apocalypse, so he can't be good news," Mr. L said, still searching through a book still, looking for answers.

"Has he done anything yet?" Maka asked. "Besides strike terror into our hearts?"

"Not as of yet,"

"But we're still trying to kill him?"

"Harbinger to Apocalypse, Maka," Soul reminded her.

"Have you found anything in that book yet, Mr L?" Tsubaki asked, peeking over the counter and ducking back quickly as Asura glanced in her direction.

"Apparently he's terrified of everything and can be defeated by pure courage,"

"Does pure courage take the form of a sword or something?" Black Star asked. "Or is it just my bare fists?"

"We're going to die, aren't we?"

"Probably eventually,"

"Now is not the time for sarcasm, Soul!" Maka snapped. "We're going to go over the to and spread out as fast as we can, come at him from different angles. He can't look everywhere at once right? Does Liz have her phone?"

"Yes, why?" Tsubaki answered.

"Kidd hates the convenience of modern day technology, and Patti never answers," Maka explained, patting her pockets to find that she didn't have her phone either,"Can I borrow someone's cell?"

Black Star handed over his phone, a Samsung that was sturdy, featureless and 'great'. Maka quickly dialled Liz's phone number, not bothering to check the contacts.

"What!?" Liz snapped down the phone. "I'm a little busy at the minute,"

"We're all going over and spreading out, he can't look at us all at the same time,"

"Sounds like a plan," Maka hung up, tossing the phone back to Black Star without so much as a 'thank you'. Manners had a tendency to fall by the wayside in the event of the Apocalypse.

She vaulted over the top of the counter without so much as a by-your-leave. She moved quickly, avoiding eye contact though she could feel his fleeting glance. Patti and Liz had moved away from the table, and she could here Soul and the others running behind her. Kidd was standing up behind the table, and a shotgun blast punched through the library. He was thrown backwards, landing on his ass, thoroughly unprepared for the recoil.

Patti shot quickly through the blast, and there was an explosion of black, tarry blood on the demons shoulder. He didn't move, but Patti dropped her gun and screamed as her arm snapped. Her right arm hanging uselessly, she scooped up the gun with her left and grit her teeth, aiming unsteadily towards Asura. Liz glanced over, concern flickering in her eyes, her expression becoming steely and determined. She shot two shots in quick succession, one making it through to pierce the demon's abdomen. Blood soaked into the fabrics and skin he had wrapped himself in.

Tsubaki was pushing through the invisible with shadows, the strain visible on her face. She forced a small gap and the shadows flowed through it, coiling around Asura, tightening and slicing and piercing his skin. The viscous black blood oozed through the shadows and feel down the inter-dimensional hellhole. An eager cacophony of howling rose in response to the spilled blood.

The demon tensed, and a ripple pulsed through the darkness, and Tsubaki was thrown back, smashing into the stacks and causing them to topple. Black Star sprinted towards her, abandoning his post, when she didn't rise. He stood over her, loosing cross bow bolts toward Asura.

Asura moved, fascinated by the shadows he now controlled, gingerly moving his hands to experiment with this new power. The darkness moved jerkily, less than eager to obey his unnatural command. His hands twisted and the shadows sped outward in a great wave of darkness, smashing into them all and throwing them back to hit the walls.

Soul stood in front of her, braced against the wave taking the brunt of the blow, uninjured by the wave, fists clenched. He drew the sword Maka had given him earlier. She struggled to her feet as he raised it, prepared to run towards the demon. Asura was calling his new toy back to him, but it moved sluggishly. Maka could see Tusbaki sitting up, supporting Black Star with one hand and holding her other out to slow the shadows, her face screwed up in concentration. Her hand was shaking slightly.

She couldn't delay him much longer. Maka saw her eyes becoming unfocused and she dived.

She shoved Soul out of the way and gasped as the darkness punched her like a great fist holding an even greater hammer. She coughed up a mouthful of blood, spitting it on the floor and scrubbing at her lips with the back of her hand.

Soul looked at her like he really hadn't been expecting that.

Maka looked back at him like he was a loveable idiot.

Then she stood up again on shaky legs, holding up a hand like she was asking the demon to 'wait just a second while I regain my composure' she gasped down great lungfuls of air ignoring several bruised and cracked ribs and the general achyness she was feeling. She stood up straight and looked at the demon.

And Asura looked at her.

She could feel him staring into her soul and she could feel herself searching for his and finding only a great and terrible abyss that stared right back at her and choked her with fear.

She couldn't move, she was going to die, there would be a new Slayer and she would be lost to history as the world was destroyed. And it would be her fault. The Slayer who couldn't save the world. She was going to die.

Did it hurt?

Would dying hurt?

She took a step towards Asura.

She didn't want to die.

She was afraid of dying.

She took another. He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.

She was going to die.

"I don't want to die," she said. Horizontal slashes appeared on her arms and legs, leaking blood.

Did dying hurt?

Probably hurt more than this.

She could live with this pain, but not dying.

She started to run.

"I'm not going to die today," she said. "I'm too scared of dying,"

So she punched him in the face, she fist crunching against his nose space. He was shocked, angry, but confused.

She punched him again, and again.

"Maka!" Soul yelled, "Catch!"

She caught the sword, and swung hard.

Asura screamed, a pitiful, fearful noise. Maka didn't care, and his head tumbled down the hole from whence he had come. Unfortunately, it sealed itself before she could kick the rest of him down, and the demon's body fell to the floor, lifeless and headless.

_"Because I have to be," she said, her shoulders straining with the effort of holding the parry. "I will always have to be enough."  
><em>

Everyone was tired and sore and bruised and glowing. It hadn't occurred to them yet that they had a strange inhuman corpse to remove and a lot of amateur carpentry to look forward to to fixing. There was still proud surveillance of the destruction they'd caused in averting much more impressive destruction.

There's a moment, after you save the world, where you forget how shit it actually is. You forget everything that sucks and just see how beautiful everything can be. It's those post Apocalypse aversion moments Maka-

"Maka, something's wrong with Soul,"

Her head turned away from her moment of proud self reflection of what it means to be the Slayer so fast she almost gave herself whiplash. "Soul?"

"It hurts," he ground out,"Hurts a lot,"

"He barely touched you!" Liz yelled- Patti hissed in pain as the movement jostled her broken arm, "Sorry! Sorry!"

"Not that kind of hurt," he looked at Maka significantly.

"Really, Soul? Now?" Maka pinched the bridge of her nose- a habit she'd picked up from Mr. L.

He screamed, and it was followed by a painful keening noise. He clutched his stomach, howling at the sharp pangs of insatiable hunger he found there.

His fangs burst through his gums, his nails becoming dark talons and he clawed at his arms and back, shredding his red shirt and the band T-shirt underneath it. Black blades, sharp curved knives pushed up through the wounds, and his eyes glowed a bright, blood red.

He whistled, a harsh collection of notes and scratched deep grooves into the wooden floor. His back arched and he howled, moving to stand. He was taller and broader and just bigger, his skin splitting and black blades bleeding out through the tears.

"Get back," she told the others. They backed away quickly and quietly as she fought to keep his attention on her. They were tired and she was using her leader voice.

Maka could feel the crumpled square of cloth in her pocket, and she twined her fingers around it, praying for strength as she faced Soul. He looked at her hungrily, a different kind of hungrily then he had before. His eyes held no recognition for her, only gleamed in reaction to her stepping closer tentatively. He was hungry, and Slayer soul had to be very filling indeed.

Maka signalled none too subtly to Tsubaki, who nodded like she got the message. Soul had his eyes on her still, looking straight through her 'mortal vessel' to her soul like Asura had. It was no less uncomfortable than before. She could feel his eyes burning into her soul without any trace of feeling beyond hunger.

Tsubaki stretched a shadow to him, wrapping it tightly around his arms to hold him as best she could without him noticing.

Maka made soothing noises, like a farrier with a spooked horse, moving towards him slowly. His eyes followed her intently, a string of drool hanging from his lethal looking teeth. Tsubaki was holding his arms behind his bad, but her face was strained with effort. She was already exhausted by the fight with Asura. He wasn't even fighting for his freedom, sitting almost docilely and waiting for her to come closer.

She held up the handkerchief.

"Do you remember this? From the first time we met?" She smiled at him. "You saved me,"

Not a flicker of recognition.

"You helped me clean up after, when I was covered in dust and ash. And then you told me to keep it, because you knew I would need it. And you didn't even ask for it back when I said you couldn't hang around me anymore, even though I was so cruel to you,''

He looked at her curiously, like she was some kind of insect to be inspected briefly, then squashed.

"And you still had my back and even when I was patrolling on my own and it was exhausting and dangerous I knew you still had my back even though you really weren't supposed to."

He took a step closer, breaking away from Tsubaki's hold.

"And you saved me again, and told me about your self and kept me safe,

"And again," she repeated, "and you gave me the strength to fight on, when I really, really didn't want to, and when I just wanted to give up and I still had it and I knew you had my back. You had my back, even when I didn't deserve and..."

"Calm down, Maka," Soul said, all normal sized and scrubbing the blood away from his mouth. " My heart was warmed, my soul made whole and I... C'mere," Noticing her expression, which could be described as one of relief and happiness, he held out his arms.

Maka hugged him, and he gingerly embraced her, aware of her .

"You've been carrying that this whole time? Did you even wash it?" Soul whispered.

"Don't tell others, but I never actually took it out of my pocket. I completely forgot it was even in there," Maka admitted.

"So you made up all that giving you strength crap?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny that, Soul," she buried her face in his chest.

Soul sighed and kissed the top of her head.


End file.
